About Us
Mission
Centers for Public Health Preparedness (CPHP) train front-line workers in state and local health departments, pre-paring them to protect American citizens in the event of a public health emergency – inclusive of infectious, envi-ronmental, occupational, and terrorist threats. Created in 2000 with CDC funding, the network of 27 centers located in graduate, accredited schools of public health has already reached hundreds of thousands of public health workers through applied training and targeted technical expertise aimed at protecting communities in real-world crises. The CPHP network of world-renowned preparedness experts, convened and coordinated by the Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH), ensures a strong public health response is available across the nation when and where it is needed.
Importance
The south central region of the US has a large number of medically underserved areas, small rural health departments with limited budgets, and generally limited access to emergency and disaster education and training. The strategic partnership of public health practitioners and South Central Center for Public Health Preparedness (SCCPHP or Center) academics provides a comprehensive, regional approach to professional emergency and disaster workforce development. The SCCPHP provides training opportunities tailored to the unique needs of the region through onsite courses, web-based courses, satellite broadcasts, regional conferences, and newsletters. The Center also fosters and coordinates information sharing and relationships among state and local practice partners through regular conference calls, meetings, and joint training activities. The SCCPHP works with state and local health agencies in the region to identify individual and organizational-level training needs in bioterrorism, infectious disease, food safety, school safety, radiological terrorism, and other areas. These collaborative relationships with state and local public health agencies effectively utilize resources in producing training programs that meet the demands of a rapidly changing world. In partnership with the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center (New Orleans), the SCCPHP has developed and conducted a number of assessments to evaluate the region’s training needs (e.g., on-line surveys, paper and pencil surveys, interviews, and focus groups). SCCPHP needs assessments provide infor-mation regarding both individual-level, competency-based needs of the public health workforce in their area, as well as organizational-level factors influencing SCCPHP training in meeting critical competency-based training needs.
Results
A total of 155 trainings were developed and delivered approximately 412 times across the partnership region to the public health workforce, first responders, first receivers and many others representing hospitals, media outlets, emergency management, agriculture, private and state veterinarians, nurses, doctors, mental health, rehabilitation, aging and senior services, schools and day cares, faith-based organizations, and volunteers. The CPHP (Centers for Public Health Preparedness) has been extremely fortunate to have state and local partners that have been very active in the development, design, and implementation of all activities. Evidence of this can be seen by the outcomes noted in this document. Other than state and local public health partners the CPHP has expanded our partnership to include representatives from other federal, state and local agencies such as the FBI, the FBI JTTF, rehabilitation services, departments of agriculture, US Air Force, departments of senior services, emergency management agencies, fire and law departments, as well as a number of universities and colleges.
Through activities of the CPHP there have been significant gains in increasing the overall awareness of preparedness and response issues important to the state and region. Significant efforts have been made to bring together key agencies (both research and practice) for cross training and to educate the response community concerning the roles of public health in the community and in disaster response and recovery.
The CPHP agricultural security Initiatives have held five consecutive conferences with the overarching goal of bringing professionals from different disciplines (public health, veterinarians, law, fire, primary care, food safety, environmental, etc.) together to increase awareness on topics such as foreign animal diseases, quarantine and isolation, food safety, milk security, H5N1, animal and human diagnostic activities, surveillance systems, economic impacts, vaccine development, planning, resources acquisition, use of GIS, and may other topics important to agricultural security.
Through activities associated with the CPHP’s pediatric initiatives, the Center held three conferences and two workshops focusing on the needs of children in disaster response and recovery in two of our partnering states. Again, the overarching goal was to bring together multiple disciplines to identify and plan for issues such as surge capacity, mass care and medical needs sheltering, security in mass care shelters for children, mental health, school violence, and many others. The Center is now working with children’s hospitals and hospitals with pediatric capabilities from around the region to develop a sustainable network between these institutions to handle mass casualty events involving children.
Due to the CPHP’s initiatives focusing on individuals with mobility, hearing, and visual impairments, the Center has identified issues important to this vulnerable population during disaster response and recovery. The CPHP has achieved this objective by bringing together multiple state and local agencies with vested interests (such as public health, senior services, departments of aging, rehabilitation services, and other foundations and organizations focusing on specific disability issues) together to increase awareness and begin communications and planning. The CPHP has held three conferences across two states to this end.
As a result of the CPHP’s strong partnerships, it has placed over 74 interns from schools of public health around the region into state and local agencies to gain experiences in preparedness, response and recovery. A number of these interns have accepted positions with preparedness and response responsibilities from our partnering agencies, fellowships within CDC, positions within organizations such as FEMA and RAND, and positions with the CPHP program.
The South Central Public Health Partnership is supported under cooperative agreements from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) grant U90/CCU624254, and the Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources Administration (HRSA) grant D20HP00012. The contents of this program are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the CDC and HRSA.
